


boys aren't supposed to be this pretty

by louisandthealien



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: First Love, M/M, Pining, The X Factor Era, louis just really loves harry's knees
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-31
Updated: 2016-12-31
Packaged: 2018-09-13 13:55:36
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,256
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9126721
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/louisandthealien/pseuds/louisandthealien
Summary: The worst part about being eighteen and in love is having no one in whom to confide. That’s what Louis tells himself anyways, with all the robust, headstrong confidence of a boy not yet rejected. The worst part is not having anyone to gush to, rather than prickling in the back of your throat when the boy of your dreams gives you a shy grin, rather than the nights spent staring at the plywood fade of the bunk bed above you.





	

**Author's Note:**

> An indulgent drabble.
> 
> [German translation here](https://www.fanfiktion.de/s/58f010b600022122275184d7/1/boys-aren-039-t-supposed-to-be-this-pretty)

Louis feels.

Louis feels and he feels deeply, and he really and truly wishes it weren’t so. There’s just too much to feel about these days is the thing. Too many new experiences and new friendships and new laughs and new faces.

The worst part about being eighteen and in love is having no one in whom to confide. That’s what Louis tells himself anyways, with all the robust, headstrong confidence of a boy not yet rejected. The worst part is not having anyone to gush to, rather than prickling in the back of your throat when the boy of your dreams gives you a shy grin, rather than the nights spent staring at the plywood fade of the bunk bed above you. 

He feels.

He feels that subtle thrum of a deep, dark crush.

So when a boy with curly hair and a smile too big for his face inches in close, long after everyone else has gone to sleep, only to whisper “I’m not tired…are you?” Louis feels it. He’s not dumb. He’s quite attuned to his emotions, actually.

“Not really,” he whispers back, toes curling instinctually. “Too much caffeine.” It’s an afterthought, meant to cover the naturally nervous intent behind his words.

Harry giggles and the room is dark and the others are asleep and Louis _feels._

\---- 

Boys aren’t supposed to be pretty like this.

That’s all Louis can think from where he’s sat across from Harry at the dining room table, peas and potatoes untouched on his plate.

Boys aren’t supposed to be pretty like this.

Harry’s young. Younger than Louis anyways. And he’s got floppy, caramel colored hair, and green eyes the size of sand dollars, shimmery and round like the ones Louis found at the beach last summer. It’s late September--autumn really, and the boy’s skin is still a pinky-gold, smooth and clear, and undoubtedly soft.

Louis is gay. He’s known this for more or less his entire conscious life, has lived free of sexual epiphanies or emotional breakdowns. But everything here is new and confusing and the twisting, niggling, writhing bubbles in his belly is foreign. It’s bigger and hotter, so incredibly different than the sparks of _sparks_ he’d claimed to felt for others before.

Here it comes, the feeling says. Your great awakening, ready packaged in the form of the lanky, smiley, giggly Harry Styles.

Awakening to what? Liam bats at Harry over Aiden’s head, and Harry makes a faux-indignant noise, nose scrunched, lips pursed, and Louis _still_ isn’t sure what it is exactly that he’s being awakened _to,_ but he knows and he feels and it’s all a little bit overwhelming because--

Boys aren’t supposed to be pretty like this. 

Louis smushes a pea with the back of his fork and swallows. Hard.

Boys are supposed to be handsome and hot and potentially cute on an especially cozy, perfectly rainy day. Never once in his eighteen years of living has Louis Tomlinson looked at another boy and wanted to sigh, painfully awestruck by the fan of his lashes, by the slope of his shoulders.

They’ve only been a band for about three months now, and he’s known Harry for almost nine (if bathroom greetings and urinal autographs count as meetings, anyways.) So everything is new and fragile and spinning, spinning, spinning, and--

Louis is gay and he’s always known that he was gay and he has neither issues nor fears about being put into a little band with four other boys, but-- 

Boys aren’t supposed to be pretty like this.

Harry leans across Aiden and grabs a roll off Liam’s plate. Pretends to toss it over his shoulder, laughing hysterically at some joke that Louis apparently missed. His mouth is pink like candy, lips shiny like sugar, and when he looks across the table, locks eyes with Louis, raises an eyebrow and demands, “tell him to fuck off, Lou,” lips curling into a quick, little pout, Louis finds his mouth moving, words spilling without a thought, honored to even have been addressed. 

“Fuck off.” 

His potatoes go uneaten and his peas end up half smashed.

It isn’t fair.

Boys aren’t supposed to be pretty like this.

\----

Louis is losing his mind. 

That’s the only explanation for why he’s currently sitting on his bunk with the comforter piled in his lap, red faced and mortified, painfully hard and pretending otherwise.

“Are you coming down for the movie?” Harry asks from where he’s sat on Liam’s bottom bunk, clad only in baggy black boxer briefs and a stupid purple t-shirt.

Louis’d been bombarded is the thing. He’d been asleep, honest to God, finally fitting in ten minutes of rest after a week straight of 18 hour days. He’d been asleep and content and not at all prepared to be poked awake by a pantsless Harry Styles, just the two of them in a dim, warm bedroom.

It hurt how fast he’d hardened up. It was dizzying and confusing and he’d startled up straight, as if Harry could somehow see beneath the pile of blankets Louis’d been cocooned in, as if he could sense how terribly and horribly affected Louis was by _nothing._ Fucking _nothing._  

Louis is losing his mind. 

“Uh,” Louis chokes out. Refuses to let his eyes drift back down to Harry’s knees-- his _knees_ of all things. How could one possibly be so hopelessly enamored (so pointedly turned on) by hairy, knobby knees?  

“In a moment,” he says. 

“Okay!” Harry responds cheerfully, standing to go. And just like that, he leaves. Boxer briefs and t-shirt, casual as can be, as if Louis could possibly survive a two hour film snuggled up close to thosethighs thoseknees thoseribs thosearms. And he would be. Snuggled up close, that is.

He waits for the door to close behind the other boy. Waits a solid thirty seconds, breath quickening with every count. Gets a hand on his cock. Pulls himself off quickly. Flops back against the pillows. Refuses to think about Harry’s knees.

Louis is losing his mind.

\----

“Can I kiss you?” Louis whispers into the darkness of the room. Lets the silence eat his words. Chew them up. Spit them back out, back into his face, with all the nervous apprehension he’d fought so hard to choke back.

Harry’s wedged into his bunk alongside him, bundled under the blankets, under the top sheet, under his pajamas, under Louis. Nearly. Nearly under Louis.

It’s dark and Louis can’t see Harry’s curls, but he knows they’re splayed against the pillow, feels them soft and springy beneath the pads of his fingers.

Feels.

He wants to wind a curl around his index finger. Wants to pull it a little bit.

He must be going crazy.

Boys aren’t supposed to be this pretty. 

Harry makes a soft little noise, and his hand reaches up to wrap around Louis’ wrist, tugs him in surely, swiftly, as if it doesn’t cost him anything at all. Kisses him. 

The moment is quick and deafening and terribly momentous and in the pace of a heartbeat it’s done, or so it seems.

Harry pulls back and his breath is sweet against Louis’ cheek, against the skin of his lips, now hot, prickly, and damp.

There’s quiet then and that silence from before comes back, swallows up the room.

“Can I kiss you?” Harry asks. His voice is soft as cotton, a whisper’s whisper.

Louis leans in, presses his love to the other boy’s mouth.

He feels.

He must be going crazy.

Boys aren’t supposed to be this pretty.

**Author's Note:**

> louisandthealien.tumblr.com
> 
> kudos take a second, comments take just a moment.
> 
> click profile for other works.


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